


Project G.K.O.H.E.L.T.D.I.T.M(I.H.S.S.M.R.D.I.K.E.W.I.D). Working Title

by brodiemouth



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Banter, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heartbreak, Kanaya/Vriska(unrequited), Maybe a little OOC, Not Beta Read, POV Kanaya Maryam, its like a weird suburbia au, its not super relevant tho, kanayas lusus isn't around, karkat being a good friend, tha karnaya friendship oh ya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-22 07:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30035316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodiemouth/pseuds/brodiemouth
Summary: "You release your hard grip on the doorknob and whirl around to go sit on the couch so you can sketch out some new dress designs, or tend to the plants on the adjacent table, or work on your mandatory schoolfeeding tasks, or polish your chainsaw, or do a funny dance whist making loud animal noises, or do literally anything more productive than thinking about Vriska again. But you don’t. The force of your heartbreak-induced mental spiral has knocked all of those potential options flat."Kanaya is struggling with feelings over Vriska, and her feelings about her feelings over Vriska. Karkat's entire life has lead up to this moment. They're doing their best.
Relationships: Kanaya Maryam & Karkat Vantas
Kudos: 2





	Project G.K.O.H.E.L.T.D.I.T.M(I.H.S.S.M.R.D.I.K.E.W.I.D). Working Title

**Author's Note:**

> I'm DOING IT I'm POSTING WRITING ON THE INTERNET, even if it's bad, oh yeah.   
> note: Karkat lives in a hive very close to Kanaya's. This was just a scene from a weird suburbia au I don't remember anything about anymore. I just wanted to get into the habit of writing more.

Your uncomprehending stare lingers on the front door of your hive. Still open in wake of your friend’s sudden and unexplained abscond. You urge your eyebrows back down. What the hell. You comb through the last two minutes of conversation trying to find what had upset him so much. Nothing. Nothing was said that would reasonably trigger such a reactionary response. All you had done was answer his question about you, quote, “Looking like a second place Olympic winner that just got back from a celebratory brunch for the man who beat you by 3.7 seconds.” Although, you figure, Karkat isn’t a very reasonable troll. Most of his intense reactions don’t make any sense to you at all.

As you move to close the door you think of the long, profanity-riddled, near incomprehensible rant your friend may use to justify himself if he could hear you think that. The thought almost brings humor to your festering bad mood.

Almost.

The click of the door alerts you to how quiet your hive is now that you’ve entered solitude from loud, hyper emotional company. You ought to surround yourself with more considerate people, you think. People a little less loud, people a little less blatantly cold to others, people a little less impulsive, people a little less self centered, people a little less dangerous, people a little bit less like...Vriska.

You release your hard grip on the doorknob and whirl around to go sit on the couch so you can sketch out some new dress designs, or tend to the plants on the adjacent table, or work on your mandatory schoolfeeding tasks, or polish your chainsaw, or do a funny dance whist making loud animal noises, or do literally anything more productive than thinking about Vriska again. But you don’t. The force of your heartbreak-induced mental spiral has knocked all of those potential options flat. After Kool-Aid Manning its way into the forefront of your mind, this heartbreak-induced mental spiral of yours then continues to barrel down the same memory lane you’ve been torturing yourself with for the past two and a half days. You lift your feet onto the couch with the rest of you and sort of crash your elbows to your knees. You’re glaring down at sketches on the table, but not really seeing them.

Your pan wont stop replaying Vriska smashing and throwing away your feelings. It’s totally not your fault. Tavros didn't even look like he wanted to be kissing her. She looked to be in complete control of the stage and set( not that you could look for very long before your eyesight was obscured by jade), staged perfectly just so you could watch it happen as you entered the room. The room you and her had agreed to meet up at. The meeting, in particular, was one you had set up with the intention of helping her out of some mess she got herself into. You put so much time and effort into putting together helpful solutions to her problems that took her antithetical nature into account, all for some dumb pale feelings for a dangerous individual. 

(Feelings that, in retrospect, ran a lot redder than you were ever able to admit to yourself until you were crying into your tea, failing to make progress on a project into the early morning.)

But it was all very suitably dramatic. A whole theatrical display featuring the lives and feelings of you and your friends, all centered around Vriska. You're sure her evening went exactly how she wanted it. With allllllll the attention on Vriska Vriska Vriska! It was all so like her. So much so, in fact, that you are at a complete loss as to how you never predicted this outcome before it happened. 

You consider going and making yourself some food, but you’re kind of caught up in something unfortunately interesting here. That last thought keeps you melded to the couch.

You did sorta have this fantasy, one in which she is completely taken by your thoughtful helpfulness( or meddling, as everyone else likes to call it) enough so as to want to share a quadrant with you and live out this perfect fairy tail vacillation from pale to flushed from there. It sounds like a dumb wriggler dream when you put it like that, but you never did let yourself think too critically about it for a long time. Thinking about her made you happy. It's funny, and you of course mean that in the bitter way that indicates that it's not actually funny at all, how quickly those same memories now make your bloodpusher twist with...something like grief? For a relationship that never happened? You don’t even know.

And now you’re sitting on your couch mulling over a bunch of melodramatic gripes and what-ifs, alone. You think that it would be fairly reasonable to say, that you’re being stupid. No, you think, it would certainly be reasonable. You take that back again. At this point, the most accurate word you can pull from your pan to describe yourself with is pathetic. 

You focus on the dust circling through the golden evening light as you think. Your eyes focus on just a few at a time, you count eight–Uuuugh. That is so dumb. Your pan reeks of Vriska so bad it seeps into your thoughts about literal dust. You're not even upset at Vriska for that part, you usually have better control over your reactions than this, and it is upsetting. Making mature decisions has always been something you pride yourself on, and this? Doesn’t feel mature of you at all, and it’s not something you're trying to do. It’s just kind of happening. You think of all the things you’ve been neglecting to do, the people you’ve been neglecting to talk to. Oh grub, you’ve been basing how you spend your time and interacting with others on how someone else made you feel. Aw shit. That’s exactly something Vr-

The door slams open. You don’t scream but when you flinch you land yourself a whole 3 inches to the right of where you were sulking just now. You revert to your earlier past-time of staring uncomprehendingly at the door. It feels a little ridiculous that this keeps being a thing. He’s leaning really hard on the doorknob. It looks like he hurt himself with the force it took to break his way through your unlocked door, actually.

Karkat pants kind of like someone with anger management issues trying to take deep breaths, which is pretty fitting if you think about–oh he's yelling now.

“-N’T BELIEVE THAT I WOULD BE SO INCONSIDERATE AS TO LEAVE A-” he pauses for air, and thinks for a second, you’ve known him long enough to recognize his angry squished-up thinking face, “ YOU. TO LET YOU GO ON LIKE THIS WITHOUT TAKING THE TIME TO ENGAGE IN THE PROPER RITUALS, AS DEMANDED BY-” he runs out of breath again, and takes this second pause to make his way over to you and slam his loot down onto your coffee table.

“-HUNDREDS OF SWEEPS OF MEDIA COMPOUNDING THE MOST REASONABLE COURSE OF ACTION INTO OUR DISGUSTING, FEEBLE-PANNED LITTLE TEENAGE SKULLS.” He finishes. What the fuck is he talking about?

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He stops yelling and explains himself to you, in the loudest talking voice possible. “Look, Kanaya, I spend a lot of time consuming art that explores the exhaustingly convoluted yet incredibly important facet of life known as romance and its related subjects.”

“You watch a lot of romcoms.”

“N-shut-'', he huffs, “ Whatever, call them what you want, they are important enlightening pieces of art, and I have seen enough of them to know exactly how to help you with this situation, and I-uh- wanna help you. Cus yeah.” He looks at you awkwardly, you look back at him equally as awkward. Your head has been through a lot lately, what with all the painful introspection and zany behavior from your friend, you think it’s officially stopped trying at the palpable lack of angry circular ranting and shitty posturing. Like those photos of liminal spaces on the internet, its just not right.

“...You’re trying to help me win over Vriska?” Ugh, you’re way too drained to deal with that particular brand of friend-shenanigans right now. 

“What? No. Fuck Vriska, she can take her basic phycho-girl ass and go use someone else’s hatefriend as kindling for the fire she crams her numerous irons in. I’m here to initiate you into project G.K.O.H.E.L.T.D.I.T.M(I.H.S.S.M.R.D.I.K.E.W.I.D). Working title ”

Oh, ok. That was kinda weird to hear. The Vriska part, not the absurdly long code name part. You’re not even going to ask what all those letters stand for. You’ve kinda been wrapped up in your own thought spiral for so long that hearing someone else’s thoughts on the matter is a little jarring. Most of your friends stopped putting up with her shit a long time ago, after the incident, mostly. You break eye contact to gander down at the aforementioned loot. A large wad of soft looking black fabric, a tub of grub cream that’s starting to get soggy, and a stack of CD cases with dramatically posed pale skinned trolls on the covers. A notion of understanding comes too close to the sun that is your own unreasonable standards for yourself and promptly dies. Karkat is obviously trying to simulate post-breakup scenes from the movies he watches to make you feel better. That’s ridiculous. That’s downright wrigglerish. You're seven and a half and you intend to simply forget all about it as fast as possible, or something, you’re not going to cry about it over a tub of grub cream and rainbow drinker films. Vriska is already the immature one in this situation, you don’t have to get any lower down to her level.

“Karkat, I appreciate the gesture, but as you may have noticed I am not an emotionally driven movie protagonist, and intend to move past this event the normal way.”

“What. What does that even mean? What is ‘the normal way’ of getting over diamond-break?” 

Um, it's just the normal way? Without the strong feelings and melodrama, obviously.

“Maybe titling what I had in mind the ‘normal’ way wasn’t a very good choice of words, given the people I associate with. I mean, the way an adult or other reasonably mature person would do so.”

“Ok, well that tells me absolutely nothing. Please elaborate.” Uhg, how was that not clear?

“I want to get over it. Without all the dwelling on my feelings and shit. No offense to you or anything, but I really expected that I’d be able to deal with it without unproductive spiraling at every mention of her. I like to think of myself as a pretty level person. I’ve already wasted so much time being a big wriggler just because Vriska kinda threw my pusher in the trash digestion chute. Someone probably needs me to go fix their silly interpersonal problems right now. And what have I been doing? Wriggler shit. Just sulking around in my wriggler shit sty.”

“ I- And you expect yourself to, what? Stop all of the emotions that you’re obviously having by just, like, telling them to fuck off? So you can go back to cleaning up other people's wriggler shit factory farms?”

You mean, that kind of sums it up, you guess, “yes.”

He wears his scrunched angry face again, but it has a third emotion to it that you don’t find familiar. 

“No, no Kanaya, that's ridiculous!”, he waves his hands around in silence while trying to form the rest of his response, “That makes no grubfucking sense! That doesn’t even sound like something you yourself would believe. Vriska fucked you over, this isn’t some kind of test! No one heard about the Vriska thing and thought to themselves, ‘Wow! Vriska did something dramatic and shitty 'cus she felt like it again! Kanaya better not have any feelings about that! That wouldn't be very cool and collected of her!’. Ok, maybe some people would, because most people are stupid, but you shouldn’t ‘cus because you aren’t a pants-shitting idiot unlike-well-ah” He stumbles over his words trying to bring his rant back to the point.

“Look, this might not be super convincing coming from me of all people, but I’m pretty sure you literally can’t just will emotions away, and expecting that kind of thing from yourself is a moronic exercise in cruel and unusual self-punishment that you don’t deserve to go through. I brought the box set of shitty vampire flicks you like that mysteriously ended up at my hive a perigee ago. Just, we could watch them and you could have an ok time for a change, maybe.”

... hm.

You don’t have an immediate comeback. You try to think of how you plan to “will your emotions away”, as he put it. You’ve kind of been trying to do that this whole time. Of course you let yourself feel a little heart-broken! But after the first day you just kept getting distracted and feeling bad about Vriska and and then feeling worse for being distracted and generally accomplishing fuck-all, in terms of life stuff and “getting over it”. Karkat isn’t that bad at giving advice when he doesn't pull it directly from his ass, you think. You know you would still feel kinda guilty for doing it but… shitty rainbow drinker dramas. Your weakness.

You break the staring contest you and him have had going on for the past 20 seconds with a sigh, and a small smile. Fine, you give in.

“For the sake of preserving the lightening mood, I will also do the thing where we pretend that my box set ended up at your hive mysteriously, and not because you stole it.” 

“What reasonable reaction to have! Because I literally didn’t steal it. I have my own trash films to watch, don’t fucking snark at me.” Now that. That’s the familiar antagonism you were expecting.

“I thought you also told me to stop policing my own whims. Just now. Be sympathetic Karkat, I am being forced into some sort of pop media based self care. I think I will snark all I want.”

Karkat rolls his eyes with his whole body. He is so dramatic sometimes. Ok, well, he is dramatic like all the time. The dramatic reactions are pretty much leaping from his bloodpusher into the cold unforgiving air one after the other at all times of the day. You have to feel like your own little melodramatic moments aren’t so bad in comparison.

“I think it’d be pretty reasonable to say, that since I’m supposed to be taking it easy on myself or whatever, that you should be the one to fuck around with the CD player until it works and set the movies up.” 

Karkat levels a glare at you, and snatches the CD cases off the table and goes and plops down in front of the little entertainment system you have up against the wall in front of you. He starts fiddling with dials and buttons and sorting through cable worms furiously. You don’t tell him that you could just put the CDs into your computer because you don’t want to go upstairs to get it, and because small meaningless acts of passive aggression are what friendships are built on.

You’ve just gotten back from the kitchen with spoons and bowls( There's no way you're going to eat out of the same soggy slobbery pit of grub cream as someone else) and it seems Karkat has gotten your CD player to actually turn on and show stuff on the TV screen, a miracle the likes of which you probably never could have accomplished yourself. He looks back at you with triumph as you're sitting back down on the couch. He seems so excited, it makes you smile. You take the small blanket he brought with him for yourself.

“Ok, do you want to watch them in order?”

“I was unaware they went in any sort of order.”

“They’re your shitty films, Kanaya, they obviously go in an order. Look, all covers have the same trolls on them.” 

“That’s because they’re all pretty much the same film. Content wise. It’s a collection of “classics”, but none of them take place in the same universe. Just put one of them in there.” Karkat gives you an appalled sort of look. You give him a carefully flat one. What a nerd.

You’re serving up the grub cream as the movie begins on some stock cerulean character, bossing some low blood around talking about all the schemes they have planned for their trip to the cobalt country-side. She dies in a cheesy dramatic fit of overplayed shock and angry monologuing in an introduction to the jade protagonist. Karkat snickers, "That’s a pretty good impression of Vriska when she doesn’t get exactly what she wants.”, and you snicker too.

“She did ruin all her plans. Allllllll of them.”

“Allllllll of them.” Hehe.

You’re both quiet for a second. “You do deserve better than her, Kanaya. Better than me too, really, but still. You’re cool and you're, like, a good person.” He says, quieter than he has been this whole time. You feel...more appreciated than you did this morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Project Getting Kanaya Over Heartbreak Exactly Like They Do In The Movies (I Have Seen So Many Romance Drama Films I Know Exactly What I'm Doing) was a success :)
> 
> Hi thank you for reading, this is kind of my first fanfic and I don't like it very much so any kudos, comments, or criticism(especially) is appreciated, I will shovel it directly into my gaping maw.
> 
> <3


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